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Friday, June 3, 2016

Primary and Crisis (screening June 5 at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art Morley Lecture Hall)

In honor of the
upcoming presidential elections (and likely fiery destruction of Cleveland
during the Republican National Convention; all you people who just thought the
city would kind of go out of business and fall apart through entropy, aren’t
you feeling silly now?), the Art Museum is showing two classic political short-feature
documentaries by Robert Drew, Toledo-born landmark figure in the "direct
cinema" style of documentary filmmaking.

Even though his
techniques and subject matter have been as varied as the contents of a
newspaper, via his company Drew Associates, he and a team of
journalistically-oriented filmmakers have done nonfiction features encompassing
the arts, science, politics, exploration and music. All a logical extension of
Drew's early career as a photo editor at the classic Life Magazine.

PRIMARY, from
1960, was Drew’s groundbreaking scrutiny of the American political process. Drew
largely dispensed with newsreel-style narration and reporter questions to
follow candidates around, up close and personal, with a minimal camera setup,
anticipating cinema verite. Nothing like this had been seen before in the
cinematic format, and it still takes a while getting used to, but once you're
involved you're hooked.

It helps to have
the star power of this cast: John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, facing off in
Wisconsin to be the Democratic nominee for the 1960 presidential elections. JFK
has the charisma, the magazine covers and Jackie at his side (she speaks Polish
to massage the ethnic vote in Milwaukee).

But listen to
Humphrey's passionate, barn-burner of a speech to the dairy farmers who made up
his core constituents. Who would you pick? And why don’t we have candidates of
this caliber around today? It’s sad.

Drew subsequently
made CRISIS (1963) within the Kennedy White House.

Robert Drew
expressed interest in doing a similar look at a Washington administration
functioning in the midst of an emergency. And, while Drew's cameras rolling
during the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis might have been
extraordinary, the Kennedy White House refused his requests during high-stress
foreign situations.

Finally, they
gave Drew Associates the go-ahead during a charged June, 1963, domestic
situation, when Alabama governor George Wallace threatened to physically block
the entrance of the first two students of color accepted to the University of
Alabama.

A similar
confrontation had triggered riots at the University of Mississippi, and the
Kennedy administration feared a repeat (although Wallace himself had filled the
vicinity with troops to keep the peace). Drew placed separate camera crews with
JFK, RFK, students Vivian Malone and James Hood, and, perhaps most
illuminatingly, Gov. Wallace, a former boxer whose physical prowess causes some
concern for the Kennedys; should he be carried away bodily, arrested, what?

In this cast
(shocking to consider that the principles would all fall victim to assassins'
bullets) Wallace is the major surprise, as he argues calmly and seriously for
sovereign state's right and embodies the qualities of the Old South, both the good
and the bad. He is served by negro domestics (many of them prisoners on
work-release for good behavior) in the palatial governor's mansion, declares
that segregation is good for both races, and echoes later Vietnam hawks by
ascribing all the fuss to `outside agitators.'

Later James Hood
himself (who transferred out of Alabama shortly thereafter) would shake
University Circle liberal types to the core by saying he admired Wallace for
standing up against government pressure (so much for Mr. Hood getting his own
talk show on MSNBC). Wallace would sometimes invoke the lawbreaking resistance
of Martin Luther King -- whom he otherwise derided as a communist -- as a
precedent for his own defying the federal court order.

Though the 16mm
picture and sound are fuzzy, keep in mind that this level of scrutiny of
Presidential decision-making under duress had never been done before (and you
have to wonder if it ever will again). And if it is, will it just all be as
fake, staged and spun as one of Donald Trump’s reality-TV shows? It’s a pity.

With rioters poised
to destroy Cleveland, I do hope the Art Museum has had the foresight to put
into into a safe place all their paintings of dogs playing poker. I like those.
(3 ¼ out of 4 stars)